1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sample sorting apparatus for taking up a parent sample from a parent sample vessel containing a sampled liquid (to be referred to as a "parent sample" hereinafter), e.g., blood, and distributing a predetermined amount of the took up parent sample as a sample (to be referred to as a "child sample" hereinafter) to be subjected to various types of inspection and analysis to a child sample vessel.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, when a parent sample is to be took up from a test tube serving as a parent sample vessel and be distributed to other plurality of test tubes serving as child sample vessels, a batch type sample sorting apparatus (taking up/distributing apparatus) is used. With this sample sorting apparatus, the parent sample took up from the test tube serving as the parent sample vessel is distributed to a preset number of (e.g., five) empty test tubes in a predetermined amount, and the test tubes containing the distributed parent sample are transported by a transporting means to a position where various types of inspection and analysis are performed.
However, this batch type sample sorting apparatus can only distribute all the parent samples to correspond to a predetermined number of (e.g., five) inspection items. Hence, when the respective parent samples are to be distributed to correspond to different numbers of inspection items, sometimes the number of test tubes for storing the child sample is excessive or short. Therefore, the processing efficiency is degraded.